Oh No—I Forgot To Take My Antidepressant Today!

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

RED ALERT! Sound the alarms! Batten down the hatches! I forgot to take my antidepressant!

The above panic was me earlier this week. I take an SSRI antidepressant each day when I wake up in the morning—it has been part of my daily routine for the past year. I even got myself a day-of-the-week pill box to help remind me if I took my medication or not. I’ve been great at staying consisten

However, last Tuesday when I was about to go to bed, I saw it: the Tuesday box had been unopened.

Cue: cold sweats and anxiety.

What should I do? I had a lot of questions:

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Be Positive: Perfectionism

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.

—Brené Brown, from The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Among today’s college students, the drive to be perfect in body, mind, and career has significantly increased compared with previous generations of students, and this may be taking a toll on young people’s mental health, according to research published recently by the American Psychological Association.

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Mindfulness In Your Back Pocket: Headspace

Have you heard of Headspace? It’s a company helps promote mindfulness in everyday living. As of last year the Headspace app had been downloaded 11 million times and more than 400,000 people had subscribed. Headspace ranked as the highest quality mindfulness-based iPhone app in a study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research.

We like Headspace because it breaks meditation and mindfulness practices down into easy to digest pieces (and there’s science behind its design)!

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Ten Great Social Media Accounts To Follow

Photo Credit: Visual Content Flickr via Compfight cc

If you are looking for some great mental health organizations to connect with, look no further!

Twitter

The following 10 Twitter accounts tweet great mental health material related to wellness, awareness, and eliminating stigma. Even if you don’t have Twitter and you’re looking to see what these organizations are all about, you can view their tweets without having to sign up. Also most of them have other social media accounts and their own websites.

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How to Manage Summer Loneliness

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Summer vacation is here! It’s a time to take a break from the stress of school and enjoy the long, sunny days ahead. But I have found that summer can also be a lonely time. I may not see my friends every day—they might be on vacation, working, or participating in an ongoing summer activity that makes it hard to meet up with them.

Coupled with the increased free time during the day, it can be very easy for us to retreat into ourselves and isolate. But with planning and variety, we can have a fun and engaging summer, even if we’re alone sometimes! Here are some ways I handle summer loneliness:

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About Mental Illness, Disability, and Education

Mental illness can make going to school really challenging, no matter where you are in your education. Some readers have asked us about Section 504 and how it can help folks balance school and life, especially when they’re experiencing tough symptoms. Here is some information that might be helpful.

What is Section 504?

It is a civil-rights law that says schools cannot discriminate against people with disabilities—students with disabilities have to have their needs met as adequately as those without disabilities. If you have a disability, Section 504 requires that you must still able to participate in any program or activity at your school. Any school that receives money from the federal government needs to follow this law.

How do I know if I have a disability?

There are a few different ways to define a disability:

  1. A physical or mental health problem that limits a major life activity
  2. Having a problem like that in the past, that you saw a doctor for
  3. Other people thinking you have a problem, whether or not you have it

A major life activity could be something like seeing, walking, hearing, or caring for yourself.

Disabilities can be things like blindness, deafness, diabetes, migraines, learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, or allergies. Any of these things can make life activities hard or impossible—and in this case, can cause you to have a hard time in school.

What do schools have to do because of Section 504?

Schools have to provide free, appropriate public education to any student with a disability.

  • Free: The student does not have to pay out of pocket
  • Appropriate: The education fits students and their needs
  • Public: Public school district, university, or other educational center (like a local library that does classes)
  • Education: Must be provided to every person with a disability

How does Section 504 work?

You will be a part of a Section 504 plan with your school. The school works with you and your supports to decide what is best. You and your supports list the things you need so you can be involved in the activity. The school lists things they will do to help you while you are at school. For example, if you will need extra time to take an exam, the school would sign an agreement that says every teacher/professor would allow you extra time to complete exams.

You have to provide documentation that shows how your disability makes school difficult. The meeting for the 504 plan may include these things:

  • Grades
  • Staff/teachers noticing that you’re having a problem
  • Medical records
  • Testing done outside the school
  • Testing done in the school
  • Attendance records
  • Doctor’s diagnosis

Not all of these are required, but usually schools ask for more than one source of information. Keeping track of your own symptoms and the times that things are harder for you helps people to understand what you’re going through.

Where can I find more information?

disability-sign

“Wear Orange” to Protest Gun Violence

The “Wear Orange” movement began after 15-year-old Chicago high-school student Hadiya Pendleton was killed by a gunshot, just one week after performing at an event for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. To build solidarity, Hadiya’s friends asked people to raise awareness about gun violence to identify their commitment to end gun violence by wearing orange.

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How To Tell Whether A Website Is Trustworthy

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out what information on social media sites comes from reliable and credible sources. Just because something sounds true does not mean it is. Here are some tips on how to decide whether a site is trustworthy before you share/retweet it on your news feed!

  • Academic journals (for example, Journal of Adolescent Health) that feature respected authors who are well known in their specific fields.
  • Links to websites of established institutions, such as Mayo Clinic, Department of Justice, and universities and their affiliated organizations.
  • Materials published in the last 10 years (when more recent information is available)—anything older than that is probably outdated and less reliable.
  • Byline: Is the article written by a real person? Google the author’s name and sometimes you find out that the author doesn’t really exist.
  • Check the date: Sometimes websites will recycle an old story by pasting a new headline on it, but if you search on the subject, you’ll find that it’s an old story—and unreliable because it’s not recent.
  • Is it real satire? Satire is a type of writing that uses exaggeration and humor to expose people’s vices, and it’s usually clearly labeled as such. But some people don’t get the joke, and they repost satirical articles as credible information.
  • Is the site’s mission clear? You should be able to see a clear idea of who the site’s audience is, an informative and unbiased mission, and signs that the information is regularly updated.
  • Look for websites ending in .edu, .gov or .org (For example, https://www.healthykids.org). Sites that end in .com are more “commercial.”
  • Finally, rely on the fact-checkers. There are some well-known fact-checking sites whose mission is to debunk false information. Two of the most well known are Snopes and FactCheck.

(Source: FactCheck.org.)

How do you decide which online outlets to trust? Do you have any other helpful hints? Please share with us!

What Is It Like To Use Lifeline Chat?

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

I have always been quick to share the number of the National Suicide Prevention Line (NSPL) and to encourage others who may need it to use it, but I have never been on the other side. But recently I have been going through a rough patch mentally, and I have been seeking out as much help as I can get online in between therapy sessions.

So I researched the Lifeline Chat, a messaging service of the NSPL that connects callers to a trained behavioral health worker on their staff. I learned that you don’t have to be in the most extreme of crises to connect with the chat—you can contact the service in many different circumstances. In fact, there is even a small percentage of individuals who reportedly call or message the hotline weekly just to have someone to talk to about their struggles, which cover a broad scale of severity. All people are welcome to share whatever they are going through.

So what is it like using Lifeline Chat?

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